Going nowhere fast

Expect more of the same from California's death penalty system if we don't fix it

The ballot measure to end California's death penalty failed by a 52 to 48 percent vote.

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By The Record

recordnet.com

By The Record

Posted Dec. 3, 2012 at 12:01 AM

By The Record

Posted Dec. 3, 2012 at 12:01 AM

» Social News

The ballot measure to end California's death penalty failed by a 52 to 48 percent vote.

Fine. Californians have spoken. But the vote doesn't alter the fact that unless things change we'll continue to do the same things over and over and over again.

That is to say nothing will change.

Know this: The Record is not opposed to the death penalty. There are criminals so reprehensible they forfeit their right to even be classified human.

What we oppose is waste, and that's what this state has been doing for decades. The death penalty since 1978 has cost California taxpayers $4 billion, according to a 2011 study by federal appeals Judge Arthur Alarcon and his law clerk Paula Mitchell, a professor at Loyola Law School.

Since 1978 the state has executed 13 men, which equates to $300 million per execution, or roughly the annual salary of 4,400 teachers.

It's crazy to spend that kind of money for essentially nothing. It's even crazier in a state with the kind of financial problems California faces. What if it ends up costing $300 million to execute each of the remaining 725 men and women on death row? Is vengeance, even for the most heinous crimes, worth that?

In our view, clearly it is not.

But upsetting as we find that possibility, the reality is California voters still support capital punishment. And while defense attorneys have found ever more inventive ways to challenge death sentences no court has ruled California's capital punishment law unconstitutional since a 1972 state Supreme Court ruling that resulted in a replacement law.

That means state officials - be they lawmakers, members of the judiciary or with the corrections department - are obliged to keep opposing challenges and pressing for executions.

The latest challenge, going on now for years, involves the so-called three-drug protocol, a method opponents say kills the condemned but not before subjecting the prisoner to excruciating pain. That violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

The challenge resulted in a federal court judge halting executions in February 2006. The moratorium continues.

There are 14 death row inmates who have exhausted their appeals although none are likely to die in the state's new death chamber. That's because of the snarl of challenges to lethal injections and an agreement by the state Attorney General's Office not to pursue any executions until those cases are resolved.

Prosecutors in several counties have called for an end to the three-drug protocol, replacing it with a single lethal dose of pentobarbital, a drug previously used to euthanize animals. Six states use a single-drug system.

That push recently was rejected by a Los Angeles judge. Death penalty supporters are considering a statewide ballot measure calling for single-drug executions.

But opponents also are considering a ballot measure, a rerun of Prop. 34, which would have replaced capital punishment with life in prison without the possibility of parole.

With courts willing to entertain endless appeals, we should expect death penalty opponents to again go to the voters. The trend line in opposition would seem to be in their favor. In the 1980s and early 1990s, about 80 percent of Californians favored the death penalty. A September 2011 Field Poll found about two-thirds supported it. And Prop. 34 passed with just 52 percent of the vote.

What this all means: Unless things change, we will continue to go nowhere fast on this issue, and we're going to continue wasting time, energy and money on this broken system.